I was born and raised in North Yorkshire

My father was a farmer and he farmed an area

Known as No Ordinary Opera which was essentially a small moor

When I was nine years old we moved to Australia

And I remained there until I was thirty

When I was informed that the place of my birth

Was up for sale as the previous owner had moved away

I decided to visit Tell Cottage and No Ordinary Opera

With the view to purchasing the cottage and the farm

This I did at auction although I found that only the cottage was for sale

There was no mention of any adjacent farmland

On enquiry about No Ordinary Opera I was met with blank faces

I was told that no farmland of that name had ever existed

Even though I could remember it clearly as a child

The cottage although modernised was more or less the same

But the farmland had vanished completely and in its place

I found unremarkable grassland with no trace of any of our outbuildings

No Ordinary Opera had for all intent and purposes vanished into time

I still own Tell Cottage and rent it out as I live in Western Australia

But I have never come to terms with the disappearance of No Ordinary Opera

I sometimes doubt that it ever existed at all